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Transcript:

The first step of the Career Compass is platting your presents– your present — figuring out where you are today. Now the way — again, forgive my drawing skills — but here is our Career Compass. We have north at the top. South at the bottom. East and West. Going back to what I said earlier, being “on course” is considered due north, in my little metaphor here.

If you then divide the compass into 4 quadrants like that, you get northeast, northwest, southwest and southeast, these take on a certain meaning. First of all, upper-right. Upper-right deals with our present. It’s work we are doing today that we actually enjoy doing. And when I say work, I don’t necessarily mean your job. I want you to think about aspects of your job. “Oh, I really like dealing with the customer, but I hate cashing out my cash register. That drives me nuts because its all fiddly numbers and stuff.” Or “I don’t like dealing with people, but I can be on the phone with people or I love being in the back room working on fiddly bits.”Think about all the tasks you do in a given day and how much you like or dislike them. This isn’t about whether you HAVE to do the work. This isn’t about saying, “Well, I gotta do it so its part of my job.” This is about actively thinking about what you want to do. What you like and dislike. Then you start plotting those tasks on your compass. And things that you really like doing you may put up here. I really like talking with people. I really like dealing with the customer. Boy, I really hate dealing with money and numbers. Kids? Yeah, I like working with kids. Maybe seniors I like working better with. I don’t like managing. Or maybe I do like managing. I want you to step through all of the tasks you do in a given day and think of it in the way of “Things I am doing today that I like. Things that I am doing today that I dislike.” Using South as the negative We’ll say that things in the southern quadrant, the southeast quadrant, things that I’m doing but I really wish I didn’t have to.